It is just barely 2 weeks away when it will be time for hackers and geeks of the world to gather in the city of Amsterdam for the annual Hack In The Box Security Conference in Europe. Taking place at the iconic Beurs van Berlage from the 27th till the 30th of May. This year’s event is going to be special, not only because HITB will be celebrating its 5th annual HITB Security Conference with an all-women keynote lineup, but also an all new event, which the HITB Crew calls HITB Haxpo or hacker expo!

This all-new Haxpo will run alongside the usual triple-track HITB Security Conference. Think of Haxpo as bringing the best of Mobile World Congress (MWC) and Makerfaire under one roof with security overlay and strong emphasis on technology and innovation. This event is geared towards the community of hackers interested in software/network security, makers interested in 3D printing, Arduino, etc., builders who are interested in software development and hackathons, and breakers who are interested in physical security, embedded and pushing the limits of technology. This event is also aimed at members of the public for themselves to get immersed in the latest enterprise and consumer technology from anchor participants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Adobe and DELL, etc. Haxpo also features the Dutch and EU based hackerspaces, makers with 3D printers, laser cutters, a lock picking village run by The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL), a Capture The Flag (CTF) security competition and HackWEEKDAY – a hackathon of assorted technologies by Mozilla Corporation and Facebook. It also features a category to build, code, compete using LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots. The entrance to the 3-day Haxpo and HackWEEKDAY is completely FREE! The full 3-day agenda for Haxpo is here: http://haxpo.nl/hitb2014ams-haxpo/

Interested to take part?

HITB is currently looking for hackerspaces to participate at the 3-day Haxpo but are also inviting individuals or teams of builder/coders to sign up for HackWEEKDAY – The 3-day long LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robotics challenge. This category is an all-new addition to the usual HackWEEKDAY software development challenge, geared towards developers/builders who are keen to work with hardware parts and bringing them alive with writing software to solve a specific problem.

This 3-day long LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robotic challenge runs for 8 hours per day, starting on the 27th, until 30th of May. The challenge on the third day after 13:37 CET is for the participants to use the built EV3 robots to colour sort the most number of M&M’s peanuts in 120 seconds. The first day is considered to be a day for building the robots and getting to know the different parts of the EV3 robotic kit, coming up with a design for the competition on the 30th. The second day is for coding the EV3 robot using LEGO Mindstorms’ simple icon based software. There are 3 prizes to be won for the challenge; .edu LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit for 1st, 250Euro, 150Euro for 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Participating in HackWEEKDAY’s LEGO challenge not only gives you access to HITB Haxpo’s high-speed internet, food and drinks, but also a complimentary pass to the HITB Security Conference on 29th-30th of May, which is valued at EUR1337. What is the most exciting thing about that? The registration to HackWEEKDAY is completely FREE and you get all that extra goodness.